My DIY Save the Dates, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Get Excited About Weddings

When I was a little girl and my friends would start dreaming out loud about their future dream weddings, I was the one to roll my eyes and loudly proclaim that I didn't know if I ever wanted to get married. (As it was, I was quite a tomboy, so statements like this went well with my bowl cut and enormously oversized tee shirts with howling wolf faces on them.)

Fast forward twenty years, and I find myself engaged and having way more fun planning a wedding than I ever thought possible. It turns out that at its core, a wedding is really just a huge party with food and booze and all your favorite people; how could I possibly not be excited about that?!

Nate proposed in Siena, Italy, on our first trip out of the country together. I'm totally smitten with the ring he picked out--especially now that it's been resized! :)

And on top of the food-and-booze factor, I realized right away how many awesome art projects a wedding can involve. There's save the dates, invitations, decorations, favors... it's basically a crafty girl's dream. (In addition to being a truly excellent way to save money! And to think, people say an art career isn't a wise choice financially...)

So today, I'm showing you guys a peek at our save the dates!

Like all my pieces, I started by drawing this illustration by hand. I used Prismacolor art markers and ink pens to make it. Honestly, I had no idea I could do fancy hand lettering like that! I've always loved lettering, but tended to go for quirky fonts over classy ones and had thus far shied away from flourishes and the like. I'm utterly smitten with how the illustration came out!

I ended up changing the color of the lettering in Photoshop because I didn't like the way the black letters turned out. The yellow was perfect and actually fit our wedding colors when we finally picked them out! (My former eight year-old self is rolling her eyes right about now...)

In addition to making our save the dates (and eventually our invitations) myself, I'm also making all our flowers out of felt. It turns out most brides spend about $1,500 on flowers, most of which are then thrown away after the wedding. I spent a total of $100 on all the supplies I need to make our flowers and am planning to donate all but my bouquet after the wedding (and I haven't decided where, so if you know of an organization that could use flowers that will last forever, please let me know!). Plus, I get months of rainy day crafting out of it! Hooray!

Flowers in progress! All our vases are thrifted, too, which adds even more fun to the project!

To make these flowers, the tutorials for all except the succulents came from Something Turquoise, a DIY bridal blog. Find them here! (Once you've learned the basics, it doesn't take much to figure out how to do the succulents; I made them up using leaves cut in the shape of succulent leaves, glued outwards in layers like the ranunculus tutorial on Something Turquoise.)

We're getting married in October, at the Owyhee building here in Boise. I'm a little biased, but I'm pretty sure it's going to be the best day ever. :) Have an awesome week, everyone! See you back here next Wednesday!